Lower Slobbovia (geogr.)

[Jan Ivarsson TransEdit]

Loki wrote:
>Check the map, and you'll find Outer Mongolia (now simply Mongolia) in the
>center of Asia, while Inner Mongolia is a vaguely-defined region _outside_
>of Mongolia.

The reason for this is that when those regions got their Western names, they were both areas under Chinese influence. Seen from Peking's angle, 'inner' and 'outer' make perfect sense.

Marc Odegard wrote:
>Here's another one. In English the German state is West Mecklenberg. In
>German, it's Mecklenberg-Vorpommern. I think 'Vorpommern' is, roughly, 'Near
>Pomerania'.

Mecklenburg was formed in 1934 from the two states Mecklenburg-Schwerin and Mecklenburg-Strelitz.
Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania (in German Mecklenburg-Vorpommern) includes the part of Pomerania that did not go to Poland at the end of WW2.

>Another wonderful European geonym is Ostrobothnia, which takes
>an explanation of what 'Bothnia' if you are to unravel the origin of the
>name (it's cognate with English 'bottom', 'bottom of the waters of the Ocean
>Sea', furthest waters of the ocean').

The Swedish districts of Västerbotten and Norrbotten and and the since 1810 Finnish Österbotten are all situated west, north and east of the Bottenviken (the bottom bay) of Bottenhavet (the bottom sea) - the 'bottom' of the Baltic sea.

Jan Ivarsson
jan.ivarsson at transedit.st